How Chrome Apps will finally take on Windows

The new apps look and behave much like the native apps you find on Windows and OS X. They’re built using web technologies, but also with Chrome-specific code that means they won’t be able to run on other web browsers – they’re truly Chrome apps. They can exist outside of your browser window as distinct apps, work offline, and sync across devices and operating systems. They can also access your computer’s GPU, storage, camera, ports, and Bluetooth connection. Chrome Apps are, for now, only available through Chrome on Windows or Chrome OS on a Chromebook. Mac users will have to wait another six weeks before their version of Chrome will be updated.

This is very important for Chrome OS – since this means it can now have applications outside of the browser. Google’s plans for Chrome OS suddenly became a whole lot clearer.

118 Comments

It seems to me like google is just using this platform to break MS’s domination of office possibly even on the corporate desktop. Unless I am wrong google is just using the salt and pepper interface in chrome to provide the platform for these applications. No word on the cost of these suites, nor on file compatibility. But they will have to be compatible with existing applictaions to get any traction.

Has anyone seen how inexpensive some of these chromeos devices are?

I’m just not seeing how a new competitor to MS office and other MS locked in applications is a bad thing. People can still run libreoffice if they like, or go spend the many $$$’s to buy a copy of ms office.

lock in the web? it’s about using chrome as a platform for delivery of applications that may run independent from an internet connection if desired. Any developer can target chrome in addition to windows, macos, etc, so the api is apparently not closed.

In the context offered, really how different is this from what java promised to do? the chrome browser just becomes the virtual machine.

Lol no, but don’t try to sell the idea that this is with good intentions, because, guess what, you need to be logged in after you install the applications, is not enough to have an account to install them, you need to be logged in to use the applications, if you are not logged in it doesn’t matter, you can’t use it, the app launcher won’t let you, it is pure tracking, what would they need you to be logged in to use a downloaded app? to track every thing you do in your own pc and lock you in, that is pure evil.

lock in the web? it’s about using chrome as a platform for delivery of applications that may run independent from an internet connection if desired. Any developer can target chrome in addition to windows, macos, etc, so the api is apparently not closed.

In the context offered, really how different is this from what java promised to do? the chrome browser just becomes the virtual machine

Actually, it’s more like Flash in this regard. You offer up a browser plugin/extension API to give the dev capabilities that they can’t normally achieve with HTML. ‘It’s a nice alternative to web apps’, they say. ‘It’s not tied to just one platform’, they say.

Then what happens when this new technology catches on? Devs start coding to this new ‘standard’, and tell everyone else to go fuck themselves. Instead of creating web apps, they’re now creating ‘native’ apps that require Chrome to work.

Do you remember just a few years ago how you really couldn’t get the full web experience without Flash? Do you REALLY want to go back to that, where half the websites you visit say ‘this website requires Chrome for optimum’ viewing? And when a new platform/OS is released, you hope and pray that Google ports Chrome over to it? And then you start getting shoddy support in platforms with a minority of users, like Linux. This looks to already be happening.

Personally, I don’t really like Chrome all that much, so I hope this doesn’t happen. If this had been MS or Apple’s doing, people would be crying foul, and for good reason. So don’t be fooled just becuase it’s Google; they’re a publically traded corporation, and thus will fuck you just as fast as MS or Apple will, although they might be a little more cunning about it, and sneak in the back door when you’re least expecting it

When it all comes down to it I think it depends on how much control google tries to maintain over chrome and the chrome api, and how rich/complex that api is internally.

If the chrome api is mostly a thin layer that abstracts away mostly OS calls and doesn’t promise to provide the kitchen sink then that would make it less evil than something like flash that no one seems to have been able to properly reimplement (or mono/silverlight for that matter).

I know that at one point fltk was ported over to run on chrome NaCl which implied that NaCl itself was fairly low level (I would assume google chrome apps would be NaCl).

all they are doing is providing an API for people to develop applications against Chrome which BTW will work on their Chrome OS Platform too so not like flash, more like if MS offered their APIs on OS X and Linux and built their tooling to allow software to be compiled against the API and run on all those platforms.

Don’t remember ActiveX and how it locked in businesses for half a decade? Remember Google does NOT gets its money from you, YOU are the PRODUCT that Google harvests for the advertisers that are its customers.

So yeah,giving Google a way to lock users into Chrome, which will let them be as nasty as they wanna be with datamining because hey, you lose your apps if you don’t agree ya know…yeah this is bad, VERY bad.

I’m just amazed how many here after having a half a decade of MSFT rule is will to hand rule over to yeat another Megacorp. Villain with god PR indeed.

1) This is only meant for Web apps, but soon PNACL will be considered production ready.

2) This means that we will have truly cross platform apps, that run in a safe environment, that can be written in any language, run anywhere, that use standard APIs, and the implementation is open source.

3) This is way beyond what technologies like Java, Javascript, C#, etc. could do or were supposed to do. Imagine the big apps like Photoshop ported to this. Google’s aim is to leave Operating Systems like Windows or OSX in the dust and make everything depend on the cloud, this is the missing piece of the puzzle. Yet, everything they make is opensource, so competitors can implement it if they wish.

All companies are generally sociopathic by the nature of their obligations to their shareholders. ( Calling them ‘good’ and ‘evil’ is an over simplification IMO ).

That said, there is nothing particularly negative about this action by Google. Google is simply using Chrome as a base platform to build apps upon. You install the apps from the internet and they use internet technologies but they won’t realistically replace websites any more then Apple iOS or Android apps do.

Personally I think it would be awesome if we could build Android apps using the platform so hopefully google will make that possible in the future.

My personal definition of evil, doesn’t include another application framework delivered at no cost, but YMMV.

You can attempt to make it sound as innocuous as you want, but there’s no decoupling the above with the fact that Google wants web developers to build apps that are non-standard, not supported by anyone other than Google.

Would you describe encouraging web developers to build apps that only work with Google products and based on absolutely no open standard whatsoever as not evil?

Really? Just did a new install and just FYI not one, not two, but THREE pieces of software, none of which were from Google BTW, came with Chrome checked to install AND take the default browser which most normal folks don’t even know how to undo!

Feel free to download a couple and see for yourself, just be sure to uninstall Chrome first as if it detects Chrome it won’t give you the install in some cases…CCleaner, DeFraggler,Foxit Reader. And again this is the FIRST INSTALLS and less than 7 programs in I’ve had no less than 3 attempts by Google to spam me with Chrome!

So you can wave your Google fanboy flag as high as you want, if it walks like a spammer, talks like a spammer, and more importantly installs itself with unrelated software and takes default just like a spammer? Well it ain’t hard to figure out what it is now is it?

WTF does that have to do with anything? The TOPIC is that GOOGLE SPAMS CHROME and you say “Well I download Chrome and I don’t get those programs” well no crap dude, Google is the spammer NOT the spammee..I’m sure if you go and download a toolbar on purpose they won’t give you Java either, don’t know what that has to do with anything.

Well there is using the spammer’s trick of having a third party completely unrelated to Google to have a Chrome install as well as taking the default browser spot for one.

As for the second how about the fact you buy a “ChromeBook” and you have what WAS a bog standard X86 laptop that has been so locked down they you can ONLY install an alternative OS by going into “dev mode” and even after all that can you install any OS you want on YOUR laptop? Nope only one of a handful of Linux distros that have a HACKED BOOTLOADER (all run by single volunteers in their free time, good luck on getting any long term upgrades or support) will install and that is it. Now how long you think those handful of guys making those hacked bootloaders are gonna bother?

Say what you will about MSFT but I can buy any brand new X86 laptop running Windows 8 and within 10 minutes be installing ANY OS that I choose, be it Linux,BSD, earlier versions of Windows, heck i could even go OS/2 Warp if eComstation has drivers for the hardware.

Simple way to prove this is bad too…if MSFT had just announced this, would you cheer? What about if it was Apple, would you trust it? If simply changing the word Google for MSFT or Apple makes you turn against it then its probably a very bad idea, but you have fanboy blinders on.

Say what you will about MSFT but I can buy any brand new X86 laptop running Windows 8 and within 10 minutes be installing ANY OS that I choose, be it Linux,BSD, earlier versions of Windows, heck i could even go OS/2 Warp if eComstation has drivers for the hardware.

Because they haven’t traditionally had any options. Look what they did when ARM came into the picture. What other OS:es can I install on a Surface RT?

Well there is using the spammer’s trick of having a third party completely unrelated to Google to have a Chrome install as well as taking the default browser spot for one.

Chrome does not make itself automatically default, don’t spread lies.

As for the second how about the fact you buy a “ChromeBook” and you have what WAS a bog standard X86 laptop that has been so locked down they you can ONLY install an alternative OS by going into “dev mode” and even after all that can you install any OS you want on YOUR laptop?

A ChromeBook is a specialised device – they are free to do all kinds of crap. Apple does something similar with a specialized firmware. Microsoft does the same thing with Surface RT.

The issue with Microsoft’s policy is not that they do it, it’s the fact that their actions result negative results for everyone. Like only Microsoft’s keys are installed in UEFI. However, considering that there is a healthy competition between browsers, Microsoft is free to announce extensions like this all hey want.

It is YOU that are the liar sir, I have to remove Chrome at LEAST a half a dozen times a week from customers whose had their browser hijacked, so I know damned well what it does and does not!

Don’t believe me? Uninstall Chrome, make IE the default, then download and run CCleaner and let it install Chrome and see what you get which makes Google a SPAMMER, no different than the toolbar jerks.

Ignoring a man’s right to life as he’s dying right in front of you because of a poison you administered, that’s evil in almost all cases. Ignoring someone’s property rights by breaking into their house & nicking their TV, that’s not evil, just pretty bad.

Google isn’t evil because it simply doesn’t get up to enough uncompromisingly malicious activities.

In fact, almost no mundane crime or dubious practice is actually evil, because otherwise evil becomes just another word for “things that aren’t done by thoroughly decent people”.

We have to use this same English vocabulary to describe things on far more extreme moral scales the IT industry ever is, so lets try & keep some of the more useful words left over, eh?

They aren’t encouraging web developers, they are encouraging native app developers. Chrome is already a capable web browser and supports all the web standards. They are making this for Chrome OS, which is an OS and needs more capable native code than HTML can deliver.

They tried this first with NaCL(making it an open web standard) but no one else wanted on board.

Seriously, i don’t understand the obsession with html “applications” these days.

It’s like trying to hammer a nail with a diesel pile driver.

It never was, never will be, and never can be native. It’s parsed, interpreted and rendered in a browser. Even java is more “native” than this.

html just doesn’t have anything that could make it native. Memory management, pointers, hardware access, etc. NOR SHOULD IT.

It’s a f*cking markup language. Why won’t people stop raping this over and over?

Most web apps are SHIT!

They are either very limited, or very crappy. Don’t work with browser x, require plugin y, need flash, java, whatever. Why? Because they are all hacks, built on hacked up libraries, exploiting some loopholes in something that was hacked up on top of something that was never meant to do what it’s doing now (yes, i’m talking about javascript).

The only reason that web “apps” are so successful now is that it’s (relatively) easy to write something that looks pretty and scale it out with ease.

The junctions between web “apps” and the web itself is that the web started out as a distribution platform. It’s all about content, and so are these so called applications.

Here are some cases where web apps (i’ll drop the pedantic quotes) work, because it’s all mainly about content anyway, and so the app can be seen as a way of formatting/editing/presenting the content:

– Email

– Social media (ugh)

– Instant messaging

– Youtube

– Porn

– Magazines

Wake me up when we can do computational fluid dynamics at a comparable performance to C code, maybe then i’ll start paying attention to these … apps.

I know, i rant. Not everyone agrees. It’s nothing personal, i’m not mad at you, or any of your friends. I still love you, it’s cool.

Web apps are terrible. Yes they’re a ok way to create cross platform apps for minimum cost, but don’t fool yourself into thinking they are anywhere close to native apps. They aren’t now and they never will be.

But every developer is doomed to make the same mistake. Get excited about things like phonegap and make some apps. Then realize that anything beyond the trivial is clunky, slow, and error prone. Facebook made that mistake and had to trash their whole mobile strategy in favour of native apps. Now their apps are miles better.

Web apps are terrible. Yes they’re a ok way to create cross platform apps for minimum cost, but don’t fool yourself into thinking they are anywhere close to native apps. They aren’t now and they never will be.

But every developer is doomed to make the same mistake. Get excited about things like phonegap and make some apps. Then realize that anything beyond the trivial is clunky, slow, and error prone. Facebook made that mistake and had to trash their whole mobile strategy in favour of native apps. Now their apps are miles better.

Why not just write apps in a cross-platform language, like fpc/lazarus or if you want C/C++? You can just create one code based and target any supported platform as you like.

You can attempt to make it sound as innocuous as you want, but there’s no decoupling the above with the fact that Google wants web developers to build apps that are non-standard, not supported by anyone other than Google.

OMG! Wanting to have more developers for your platform is evil!!!

Would you describe encouraging web developers to build apps that only work with Google products and based on absolutely no open standard whatsoever as not evil?

As long as they are not encouraging developers to replace open standards with proprietary tech…

In any case, all of the APIs that Google is offering(not demanding) are implemented in an open manner.

I don’t get it at all. How are they making the machines any less than yours?

How are they “Thinking they can do whatever they want”? I only see them thinking they can turn their browser into an application platform. You can use other browsers and/ or not use any applications based on their browser platform.

For what its worth, I’ve never understood why Microsoft didn’t just make .net an api built into windows instead of being a separate run time. Anti Trust Issues, maybe? In any case, that was a big factor in my old company abandoning the desktop and moving to web based applications.

You have to target 3.5, 4.0 and 4.5 as well. Microsoft has tested that the .NET4.5 CLR (sans the new libraries) is behaviorally equivalent to the .NET4 CLR.

There’s a lot of work done around the tooling to help with the corner cases (.NET 4.5 projects being referenced from .NET4 code) and VS is smart enough to create a manifest that will automatically prompt you at runtime that you require .NET4.5

The thing that’s been different now (with 4.5) from previous (2.0 -> 3.0 -> 3.5) is that the CLR2 was completely unchanged across those releases. Only work on top of them (WPF, WCF, WF, etc.)

I said new versions. Not versions that existed when that particular versions of Windows came out. Windows 7 does not automatically get .net version 4, for example, it is an optional download in Windows Update.

Not until windows Vista in 2006. We were following the development of Windows XP and .Net, hoping that both would end up getting shipped together. It didn’t happen with the initial release or any of the service packs.

The Chrome specific APIs are there for the things that cannot be done with browser/Internet centric stuff. For example, your application needs a UDP multicast socket – you can with a custom plug-in or other wrapper, but now you can write it in JS and run in inside a browser like any other web page/app.

Mozilla is trying to do the same thing with their WebAPI initiative – for the FirefoxOS. If W3C/IETF will standardize on one (or something), then we can run the same apps in other browsers too.

I honestly can’t find fault with this, besides my own general distaste for the absolute mockery of a developer environment that is HTML5/JS.

What Google is doing is creating a platform that runs in parallel to the “web” and using familiar technologies.

Microsoft has done the same with HTML5 apps on Windows 8, they call into Windows only WinRT APIs.

So while HTML, CSS, and JS is reused, there is still vendor stuff down below.

I don’t think either approach is bad, only that it underscores the slow pace of innovation at the W3C. Obviously the web standards are moving at a glacial pace, so Google needs to fill in the cracks.

It seems to be, to me, an implicit acknowledgment that web technologies as they stand are still a poor fit for the scenarios that native applications require.

I find it hard to join in the chorus of vendor lock in when this isn’t being pushed as a web technology. Google isn’t advocating for people to write websites with Chrome only behavior, they’re advertising a platform you develop with familiar technologies.

To me, the only person being 100% faultless here is Mozilla. They seem to have contributed everything they’ve had to invent on top of web standards back to the standards bodies as open specifications — and that’s an extremely good thing.

What Google is doing is creating a platform that runs in parallel to the “web” and using familiar technologies.

Yeah, didn’t Flash start out this same way? It was this thing you could use when regular HTML just wouldn’t do.

And then people started writing entire web sites with it, so instead of being this parallel thing, it ended up being a rather grotesque form of lock-in.

If HTML/JS isn’t up to the task of doing real app dev work, then let people write REAL native apps that don’t require a fucking web browser to be present. How much sense does that make? If you’re just going to write apps that work the same on every OS, then you might as well have only one OS.

Yeah, didn’t Flash start out this same way? It was this thing you could use when regular HTML just wouldn’t do.

Yes, but Flash became an independent app runtime after the fact. Not before. Flash always was a way to enhance existing website deployments and was from the start marketed as such. Rich Internet Applications as they were called.

And then people started writing entire web sites with it, so instead of being this parallel thing, it ended up being a rather grotesque form of lock-in.

I think the results speak for themselves, in that HTML back then was entirely too limiting. For example, I remember when Silverlight 2.0 launched it had a JIT compiler that was ~1000x faster than Javascript. Obviously things have come a long way, but they weren’t always so palatable.

I don’t see that happening again, especially because Google isn’t aiming this at the same market that Macromedia/Adobe was with Flash.

If HTML/JS isn’t up to the task of doing real app dev work, then let people write REAL native apps that don’t require a fucking web browser to be present. How much sense does that make?

You’re talking about sense when there’s a browser sitting in between the app and the OS. There’s never, ever going to be sense in that. Ever.

If you’re just going to write apps that work the same on every OS, then you might as well have only one OS.

Cross platform applications are the biggest lie of the century. Maybe they were true when the computing platforms were Windows, Linux, and OSX but with the advent of the mobile OSes, that’s no longer an achievable goal.

HTML is a lowest common denominator (write once, suck everywhere) that we’ve been able to shoehorn into something, but I’m not convinced any platform can do it now. Not Flash, not Silverlight, and not Chrome Apps.

I think Google’s ambitions (particularly on the cross platform side) are kind of silly, but that’s completely aside from whether or not this is a nefarious act. I’m not convinced it is.

Cross platform applications are the biggest lie of the century. Maybe they were true when the computing platforms were Windows, Linux, and OSX but with the advent of the mobile OSes, that’s no longer an achievable goal.

Qt Is changing that as we speak. Native speeds cross platform between desktop and mobile. Sure if you want a good UI you’re going to want to make separate UIs for the different form factors, but it does work, and will work a lot better come Qt 5.2 with full support for Android and iOS (and Blackberry and Jolla and Ubuntu etc etc)

Cross platform applications are the biggest lie of the century. Maybe they were true when the computing platforms were Windows, Linux, and OSX but with the advent of the mobile OSes, that’s no longer an achievable goal.

Qt Is changing that as we speak. Native speeds cross platform between desktop and mobile. Sure if you want a good UI you’re going to want to make separate UIs for the different form factors, but it does work, and will work a lot better come Qt 5.2 with full support for Android and iOS (and Blackberry and Jolla and Ubuntu etc etc)

I find it hard to join in the chorus of vendor lock in when this isn’t being pushed as a web technology. Google isn’t advocating for people to write websites with Chrome only behavior, they’re advertising a platform you develop with familiar technologies.

I agree with your whole post and would like to add the following: how can it be “vendor lock-in” if it is multi-platform and Google is not even close to be a dominant player? It is very different from IE6 case, for example, in that you were obligated to run that freaking insecure browser under MS Windows to access some sites facilities.

It seems more “java-like” API and being the whole Chrome the “interpreter”. Yet, I would not like to use any “application” build this way as I disliked 99%+ of java apps I tried: they were slow and foreign at that time though things may be a bit different this time around, as we have way better computers now and things would not be as terrible as they used to be.

However, unless Google keeps true to its motto “Don’t be evil” and properly document the expected behavior of the components involved so that, for example, Mozilla or Microsoft would be able to reproduce and run the apps, I would not touch or write any code for it. Perhaps, it is just me.

very well said. I don’t think sane folk could argue much with most of those points.

If google were feeling ‘very open’ for some reason perhaps they could allow users an ‘alternative browser’ choice on Chrome OS alongside Chrome. Might be a nice unexpected PR move for them in the future

But it’s not lock in if the Chrome Apps aren’t being marketed as wider web apps

If these apps require a Google account to install or run, that immediately removes them from consideration. I don’t need to register with a PRISM participating corporation to install a Firefox extension.

1. This is vendor lock-in – Google has already submitted this entire framework to the W3C for standards tracking. That doesn’t mean that other browsers will necessarily support it, and it doesn’t mean that it will become a standard, but it does mean that it is not an attempt at lock-in… They want other browsers to implement it – there is nothing about it that is Google specific. There is some overlap with existing standards (http://www.w3.org/TR/widgets/), but it’s close enough that it can be viewed more or less as an extension to the widget api.

2. You need a Google Account – You only need an account to get apps in the web app store, because… well that is how you get to the app store. There is absolutely nothing stopping someone from publishing an application anywhere they choose to, and you certainly don’t need a google account to run one. Its just a zip file with a special extension.

3. This is forking the web – The web is not HTML and the web is not JavaScript… The web is HTTP. A web app, but definition, cannot be built without HTTP – it is simply required. This (chrome apps) don’t need HTTP to function at all. It lets you build things you cannot build as pure web apps. The point is to use web technologies without relying on the web itself (other than as a bootstrapping mechanism – and even that isn’t strictly required).

4. This is ActiveX all over again – Ummm no. That simple – its not even close. Please read about it a bit before jumping to conclusions.

I simply don’t get all the Debbie Downer posts about this. Google has an OS, they want to gives developers a tool to build richer and more capable applications – things that can interact with hardware and can run without a network connection – you know, conventional applications. They don’t design a framework for only Chrome OS though – they design a framework for any OS. It doesn’t rely on any proprietary technologies, they share it with the rest of the industry so that if they want to they can implement the same thing in a compatible fashion, and they give it away for free…

Is not the same, chrome apps are a totally different story not even compatible with the standard, they use chrome specific functions like this one:

chrome.app.runtime.onLaunched.addListener(function() {

// Tell your app what to launch and how.

})

Even the manifest is different, you are ignorant or misinformed.

Did you even read what I said? I said there was overlap with some standards (i.e. widget api and packaging) – not that this was compliant with those standards. It obviously isn’t since about 90% of it is completely new functionality that doesn’t exist in any standard.

What I specifically said was that they submitted this for standards tracking – Google announced that at I/O when they demonstrated it.

It obviously isn’t since about 90% of it is completely new functionality that doesn’t exist in any standard.

Then they haven’t commited any standar, stop spreading lies.

… and chrome apps are not the web…

Yet, they require you to have a web login to use them, oh the irony.

And how can they try to commit a standar w/o concensus, “Hey this is what I’m doing, I’m ignoring you and making my own standars, you can try to implement them, btw, I used just chrome sprcific API, so goof luck trying to emulate them, wnat more details? get a G+ account.”

Timestamp 36:20 or so… Im really posting this for the benefit of others, I can tell from your tone you are a lost cause.

Yet, they require you to have a web login to use them, oh the irony.

No they do not. They have unfortunately made it more difficult, but it is not impossible. If you launch chrome with the “–enable-easy-off-store-extension-install” switch, you can install them from anywhere, no login required. And you never needed a login to run them – that is straight up bullshit.

I will agree that I think they should change this policy, or at least come up with a different mechanism to protect users from malicious extentions – but again, they have not removed this ability – they more or less hid it behind a runtime flag.

And how can they try to commit a standar w/o concensus, “Hey this is what I’m doing, I’m ignoring you and making my own standars, you can try to implement them, btw, I used just chrome sprcific API, so goof luck trying to emulate them, wnat more details? get a G+ account.”

Im sorry but it is you who have no idea how this works… The way the W3C process works is you initiate a working group in order to achieve consensus – but you do that after you have a working implementation. Its not the f*cking mob – no one has to go ask the godfather if it is ok to do something. Every single standard in the W3C started off this way.

…and as far as I can tell ALOT of this stuff is based on Boot2Gecko. Everyone is doing there own thing at this point obviously – it is still very early. But there is a parallel effort to have it all land in the same place through standards tracking in the W3C.

I know how the w3c standard works, some one needs something, it implement it then submitted as a standard, I wouldn’t call the best way.

Whats the alternative? Sit around talking about all the cool stuff they could do and waiting until everyone agrees before actually doing anything? Yeah, that would work, if your goal is to never get anything done…

That’s been a trend for a while on OSNews comments, stretching the definition of any negative term so that it can be applied to Google. It’s hilarious to see people casting about for any spin they can use to pretend that users are, say, “locked in” to GMail or youTube – the only way they can do it is to redefine “lock in” to mean “providing a service that’s good enough that most users have no incentive to switch to the competition.” That’s practically a textbook example of the fallacy of false equivalence – sorry, but being too lazy & complacent to switch is not the same as being locked-in.

Then, to top it all off, we have folks like Tony Swash acting as if that’s some kind of enlightened position – while pretending that everyone who disagrees is a naive hippy viewing Google through rose-colored glasses.

Not that it’s any surprise – look through the comments on this story, and the most shrill, knee-jerk “waaaahhh Google is evil waaaaah” sentiments come from the exact sources you would expect: the local Apple Defense Brigrade-slash-Google anti-fanboys.

Actually, is quite the contrary, when Google takes an unethical action from MS’s manual, are the Google fan boys who twist the term of evil to not apply it to Google, but cleverly still apply it to MS, it is really pathetic.

Actually, is quite the contrary, when Google takes an unethical action from MS’s manual, are the Google fan boys who twist the term of evil to not apply it to Google, but cleverly still apply it to MS, it is really pathetic.

I believe the words you’re looking for are “I know you are, but what am I?”

Everything that Google does, or least everything of import, has to be understood in the light of it’s core business strategy. Thus is doubly so in the GoogleV2 post Schmidt phase of the company.

Google’s strategic aim is to:

a) Insert it’s services in everything that is happening on the internet, that is a horizontally across all platforms and activities.

b) Do everything possible to ensure that all users of it services and products must be signed into their Google+ accounts. Like many others I initially misunderstood Google+ and saw it as an attempt to compete with Facebook. That was a mistake, Google+ is much more than that because it it is central to the reason that Google seeks to be universally present across all platforms and activities which is to collect data on user activity so that it can increase the value of it’s advertising business.

Android was a defensive play against initially Microsoft Mobile and then against the far more threatening iOS, and as such it has been a success from Google’s point of view, it has done it’s job. Android has prevented iOS from taking over the mobile device market and dominating it to such an extent that Apple could have at some point destroyed Google’s business model by shutting out it’s services. There was no sign that Apple was planning to do that but Google could not take the chance, it could not allow Apple to hold a kill switch on it’s business. Does anyone doubt that without Android no non-Apple handset OEM could have come up with anything to compete with iOS in time to prevent domination by Apple? But now Android has done it’s job, development of the core OS has slowed because Google doesn’t need to develop the OS as it’s not trying to build a phone OS business (the mistake Rubin’s made and paid for), and Play Services means Google can roll out it’s services across all the fragments of Android across the globe.

Google is far more focussed at the moment on Chrome as infrastructural layer to ensure the ubiquity of it’s services. This extension of Chrome into off-line apps is just another step in that process as the key feature from Google’s point of view is another lever to push people into always being signed into their Google+ account.

Google is always going to feel most threatened by other horizontal business models such as Microsoft and Facebook, any significant area of user activity it cannot collect data on devalues it’s core advertising business, but vertical business models such as Apple’s, and increasingly Samsung’s, also hold their own threat but as long as Google can get it’s services into those horizontal stacks it’s business model can work.